Friday, July 18, 2008

My Sports Illustrated Dilemma

In 1988 my grandmother noticed my love of sports and decided that she would get me a subscription to Sports Illustrated. Eventually, this became my Christmas/birthday present from her every year. I loved it. I was hooked as soon as my very first issue arrived at my door. You can see why.

I loved the pictures and the articles and I would almost always read it cover to cover every week. In fact, I developed a "system" for reading each magazine. When it arrived, I would open it and flip through it page by page to see the pictures and take note of the articles I wanted to read first. Then I would go back and read those articles. The Table of Contents was wasted on me.

Eventually, I began paying for the subscription myself. It has been my responsibility to keep it coming to my door and it has been coming to my home for the last 20 years. Recently I began receiving renewal notices in the mail. In the past, I would wait for the one with the most red on it (as it usually provided the lowest rates) and just send it back. This year I'm thinking seriously about not renewing. As I was cleaning up the house this weekend, I was annoyed at the number of magazines I had to throw out. I was even more annoyed by the number of those magazines that I hadn't read.

I visit the Sports Illustrated web site every day and that is where get most of my sports news and information. I've noticed that the major articles in the magazine tend to show up on the site eventually. Not all of them do, but most. I'm having a hard time convincing myself that I need to keep subscribing. In fact, it's most likely that the next few weeks will be the last issues of Sports Illustrated that I ever receive.

On that note, I'll leave you with my favorite Sports Illustrated cover from the Jeff Ford Era.